Author's Response

Thanks for taking the time to write me about the article in Nursing Administration Quarterly. You made my day.

I've been a chief nurse executive for over 20 years as well as an administrator-and my interest in leadership began when I was in my own first graduate program 30 years ago. I observed that what leaders say and what they do don't always match, so I've studied leadership theory and observed what works first-hand. My hospital team decided together what we believe is ethical leadership. We devoted several meetings to agree on our principles, and what our ethical decision making rules would be. (I'm not sure how many hours that was). We reviewed them once a year, along with annual goals, objectives. We oriented all new managers to them, and I personally shared at each new employee orientation. (This is in past tense because I just accepted a new CNO position.)

Ethics are interesting because they are intuitive to most but difficult to "study'' as absolutes. My dissertation was on leadership skills for the future nurse executive. (That was in 1993 so I guess the future is now!!) I wrote a leadership book about leading with love and balancing concern for all the stakeholders, and right now I'm involved as president of AONE in all kinds of initiatives concerning patient care, professional nursing, and leadership-and the same things keep coming up-as leaders we need to be competent in so much more than just "technical'' management skills-and it's a whole lot more complicated and difficult than it looks (as you know from your management experience).

I hope I answered what you were asking.

Congratulations on being in school-and best wishes for all of your future accomplishments.

-Kathleen Sanford, DBA, RN

Consultant & Project Director, Multicare, Washington